How It Was

"The vibrant, spirited woman who was married to Ernest Hemingway for fifteen years now gives us the whole story of her life, and of their life, in a book whose concreteness and immediacy make us know—make us understand—how it was. She gives us the person she was: her Huck Finn childhood, growing up in a sunny clapboard house in a small Minnesota town, summering on lakes and rivers with her handsome, iconoclastic, adored father...her years as a reporter (in Chicago, working for the toughest woman's-page editor in the business; in London, for Lord Beaverbrook; in Paris, for Time)...her brief marriage to an Australian newspaperman... Her first glimpse of Hemingway (she's at lunch with Irwin Shaw. Ernest ambles over: "Introduce to me to your friend, Shaw"). And two short meetings later: "I don't know you, Mary. But I want to marry you." ...Their first days in Paris. Mary enthralled by him, yet nervous, "feeling the heat of his exuberance melting my identity away"...Their first fight (Marlene Dietrich pleads for him: "He is good. He is responsible. He's a fascinating man. You could have a good life, better than being a reporter.") ...Their marriage in Cuba...The Finca where they lived their "own special crazy good life" (guests in endless relays, feasts, the halcyon days fishing aboard their beloved Pilar, nonstop talk, nonstop daiquiris)...Their compromises and quarrels and lovings... Ernest at the race track, showering Mary's baffled, puritanical mother with his winnings...Mary, helping as best she could through the turmoils that marked the writings of ACROSS THE RIVER AND INTO THE TREES, THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, and A MOVABLE FEAST...." - From dust jacket notes.